The Liberace of Baghdad

Originally director Sean McAllister planned to make a movie about life in Baghdad immediately after the so-called end of the second gulf war, but when he befriended Samir Peter, the articulate, funny, resolutely chain-smoking title character of this 2004 documentary, he opted instead to train his video camera on him. Once the most popular concert pianist in Iraq, Samir formerly maintained a rather extravagant lifestyle, with a large, lavish house and plenty of booze and women. By the time McAllister finds him, he's holed up in a small room in the basement of a Baghdad hotel, playing nightly for a scattering of mercenaries and military personnel and too afraid to make the trek back to his house each night to join his children. In English and subtitled Arabic. 75 min.
ByJoshua Katzman